slave's chorus, only the pain was real.
The trains seemed barely lit, and there was no way of knowing what sort of care their passengers were getting. The only person Russell saw was a young and rather pretty nurse, who was seated on some vestibule steps, puffing on a cigarette. She looked up when she heard him coming, and gave him a desolate smile.
The tunnel soon curved to the right. He guessed it passed under the Adlon Hotel, where he'd spent so many hours of his pre-war working life. He wondered if the building was still standing.
Unter den Linden Station suggested otherwise. Large chunks of sky were visible in several places, and no one was using the rubble-strewn platforms for shelter. By contrast, the long curve round towards Friedrichstrasse was the darkest section so far, and when he heard music drifting down the tunnel he thought he must be imagining it. But not for long. For one thing, it grew steadily louder; for another, it was jazz.
As he reached the Friedrichstrasse platforms he could hear the music quite clearly: the players were somewhere close by in the subterranean complex beneath the main-line station. Many of those camping out on the platforms were obviously enjoying it, feet tapping to the rhythm, smiles on their faces. He had seen nothing stranger in six years of war. Or more heartening.
He followed several corridors to reach the U-Bahn booking hall. The trains were still running all the way to See Strasse, which seemed another small miracle – the terminus couldn't be that far from the front line. Russell waited while a woman pleaded in vain for permission to travel – her eighty-five-year-old mother was alone in her Wedding apartment, and needed help to get out before the Russians arrived. The man on the barrier was sympathetic but adamant – only people with official red passes were allowed on the trains. As she walked despairingly away Russell flashed the one that Leissner had loaned him, and hurried down to the U-Bahn platforms.
He needn't have bothered. The trains might be running, but not with any regularity, and if the rats playing between the tracks were any judge, an arrival wasn't imminent. When a train did arrive an hour or so later, the front four carriages were already packed with old-looking soldiers, presumably en route to the front. Russell squeezed into one of the others, almost losing his Reichsbahn cap in the melee.
The train must have stopped a dozen times in the tunnels between stations, and on each occasion Russell feared an announcement that it would go no further. He and his fellow-passengers were finally told as much after the train had sat at the Wedding platform for almost half an hour. This was not the nearest station to Prinz Eugen Strasse, but it was not that far away. As he walked up the platform towards the exit he noticed that the Volkssturm were not getting off, and that the front half of the train was being uncoupled for further progress up the line.
As he climbed the stairs towards street level the sounds of the war grew louder, and by the time he emerged onto Muller Strasse it was clear that the fighting front could only be a few kilometres away. The sudden detonation of several artillery shells a few hundred metres up the street was encouraging, implying, as it did, that no Soviet units had yet penetrated the area. The last thing Russell wanted to meet was a T-34.
Haste, he decided, was probably more important than caution. He walked swiftly up the eastern side of Muller Strasse, conscious of how empty this part of the city seemed. Most people would be in their basements, he supposed, just waiting for the Russians. Those still working in the city centre would be sleeping in their offices, not commuting through shellfire.
As he crossed Gericht Strasse he caught a glimpse of the Humboldthain flak towers, which had still been under construction when he left Berlin. The main tower was giving and receiving fire, its guns pumping shells towards the distant suburbs, while incoming Soviet rounds exploded on impact with the thick concrete walls to little apparent effect. The whole edifice was wreathed in smoke, like a wizard's castle.
He took the next turning, and soon reached the intersection with Prinz Eugen Strasse. The block containing the apartment that Effi had rented as a possible bolthole was down to the right. Or had been. There was only a field of rubble there now. The neighbouring block had lost an entire wall, leaving several storeys of rooms open to the air, but Effi's had been razed to the ground. And not recently, Russell realised with some dismay. He was sure she'd come back here, but how long had she stayed?
Each pair of blocks had its own shelter, he remembered. As he strode along the street to the next entrance, a shell exploded behind a block on the other side, throwing what looked like half a tree into the air. He broke into a run, reaching the shelter of a courtyard just as another shell landed somewhere behind him. Taking the steps to the shelter two at a time, he suddenly found himself the object of numerous stares.
The Reichsbahn uniform was obviously reassuring, and most of the shelter's occupants wasted no time in returning to what they'd been doing. One old woman continued smiling at him for no apparent reason, so he walked across to her.
'My husband used to wear that uniform,' she told him.
'Ah.'
'And before you ask – no, he wasn't killed in this war. He didn't live to see it, the lucky old sod.'
Russell laughed, then remembered why he was there. 'Can you tell me when the block across the street was bombed?' he asked.
'Autumn of '43,' she said. 'I can't remember the month. Did you know someone who lived there?'
'Yes.'
'No one survived, I'm afraid. The whole building came down, and went right through the basement ceiling. They were digging for days, but they didn't find anyone alive.'
Russell felt cold spreading across his chest, as if his heart was a heat-pump and someone had just switched it off. He told himself that she'd probably moved out long before, that the Effi he knew would never have settled for simply waiting out the war. She had to be alive. Had to be.
He went back up to the street, and began retracing his steps towards Wedding Station. Shells were now landing several blocks to the north, which was just as well, because he was in the mood for tempting fate. If she was gone, then Berlin could have him splashed across its walls.
But he couldn't really believe that she was. And if she wasn't, then how the hell was he going to find her? Where else could he go, who else could he ask?
As he approached the station he suddenly remembered Uwe Kuzorra, the police detective who had helped him escape in 1941, and who lived only half an hour's walk away. He would have access to state records, to lists of bomb victims, and of those arrested.
No, Russell told himself. If Kuzorra was still working for the police, he wouldn't be at home. And if he wasn't, then he wouldn't be able to help. There was no point.
Heading underground once more, he wondered who else he could go to. The only person he could think of was Jens. At least he knew that Jens was still in Berlin. He might know something, and if Russell had to beat it out of him, he was more than willing to do so.
The train at the platform eventually pulled out, but had only reached Oranienburger Strasse when its journey was abruptly cut short. Russell had sometimes used this stop when visiting the Blumenthals in 1941, and felt a pang at the memory. Martin and Leonore were almost certainly dead, but their daughter Ali had always said she would rather go underground than accept a Gestapo invitation to the east. If she had, she might still be alive. There had been a lot of decent 'aryans' in Berlin before the war, and Russell was willing to bet that some would have offered their Jewish friends a helping hand.
Two other memories caught up with him as he walked down the stretch of Friedrichstrasse that lay between the Spree and the railway bridge. First he came to Siggi's Bar, half in ruins and boarded over; it was there that he'd waited for Effi on that terrible evening, believing that he'd never see her or Paul again. And there, on the other side of the street, was the model shop that he and Paul had often visited, with the proprietor who never tired of talking about his customer, the Reichsmarschal. That too was boarded up, and so, Russell guessed, was Goering's hunting lodge out at Karinhall, where the Reich's largest model railway was reputedly laid out. Perhaps the Russians were out there now, playing with the trains. Or perhaps they'd shipped them home to Stalin.
There was no music playing beneath Friedrichstrasse Station, which was something of a disappointment. Down in the tunnel there was nothing to distract him from thoughts of Effi, and the possibility that she had died in Prinz Eugen Strasse. There was not even consolation in the certainty of a quick death – she might have been under the rubble for days.
The hospital trains gave him something else to think about. He remembered that Leissner had talked about a possible flooding of the tunnels, and wondered if any provision had been made for an emergency evacuation of
